Dual Daisuke
by Cyan and Bradmon
Summary: Daisuke get split into two individuals during a traumatic exit from the Digital World, and he and his friends have an extremely confusing weekend when each of his halves screws up the life of the other. Rated PG for a bit of shounen-ai.
1. Raining Cats and Dogs

_**Summary:** Confusion and misunderstandings abound when Daisuke gets split into two people while leaving the Digital World. Nobody can quite figure out why he suddenly starts acting so strangely ... well, even stranger than Daisuke normally is! Rated PG-13 for a bit of shounen-ai._

**Authors' Notes:** This story represents a bit of a change for us, since we're posting the chapters pretty much as soon as we write them. That means if you review the story quickly enough, you may even be able to influence the plot! Just be aware that we plan on no-one knowing there are two Daisukes until chapter 4. 

**Standard Disclaimer**

_Patamon_ Can I do it, please? 

_Bradmon_ Uh, you got to do it the last time. 

_Patamon_ All right, I'll let someone else do it. 

_V-mon_ Can I? Can I? Can I? 

_Cyan_ Sure ... you don't mind, do you, Cantomon? 

_Cantomon_ No, not really. 

_V-mon_ Great! OK, Bradmon and Cyan ... 

_Daisuke_ V-mon, you should evolve first. 

_V-mon_ Why? 

_Iori_ Well, you're pretty small, and big people and lawyers usually don't believe little blue digimon. But as XV-mon your words will carry a bit more weight. 

_V-mon_ Oh. OK. V-mon, evolve to - 

_XV-mon_ - XV-mon! All right, here goes! Bradmon and Cyan do not own Digimon; Toei Entertainment does. 

_Hawkmon_ Not bad, but not really correct, either. 

_XV-mon_ What? 

_Hawkmon_ Well, Toei Entertainment has the rights to produce and distribute an animated television series based on the Digimon characters, but they are not the actual copyright holder. 

_Tailmon_ They don't? Then who does own us? 

_Hawkmon_ I'm getting to that. You see, there are other parts to the Digimon enterprise as well. Another company called Bandai has a license to produce Digimon merchandise, including games, books, electronic toys, and plushies. 

_Armadimon_ I wish he'd hurry up. 

_Hawkmon_ The actual copyright on the Digimon characters is held by **Akiyoshi Hongo.**

_Cyan_ Care to take another stab at it, XV-mon? 

_XV-mon_ Sure. Cyan and Bradmon do not own Digimon, Akiyoshi Hongo does. _(Looks at Hawkmon)_ How's that? 

_Hawkmon_ Good. 

_XV-mon reverts to V-mon_

_V-mon_ How'd I do, Daisuke? 

_Davis (hugs V-mon)_ You were great, little guy! 

_Bradmon_ Thanks, guys! 

_Miyako_ OK, now that _that's_ over with, can we get on with the story? 

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_Chapter One_  
**Raining Cats and Dogs**

_     There is a saying that anything which begins well, ends badly.     And things that begin badly end worse.     

And just when you think things can't possibly get any worse, they suddenly do. 

_

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Motomiya Daisuke's day had begun badly enough. The morning before he had angrily smacked his alarm clock into silence after it had rudely awakened him from an oh-so-pleasant dream involving himself, Hikari, a grassy field in a shopping mall somewhere in the Digital World, and two strawberry milkshakes. He had forgotten to unsmack it afterwards, so it had sulkily refused to ring for him the next morning. As a result he was late again for school. He had been unable to come up with an excuse more original than, "I slept late." 

Not even Hikari believed that one. 

Now they were in the Digital World, and it seemed Daisuke's bad luck had followed them there. No sooner had they completed the journey through the digiport than they were beset by a mob of Dark Tower Veggiemon. A few quick evolutions had taken care of them, but the fight left their digimon tired. 

And so it was that after walking through a forest, a desert, and now into grassland that the weather started turning bad. Great black ominous clouds were appearing on the horizon north of them, while even bigger, blacker, and more ominous clouds were appearing on the horizon south of them. But that didn't worry them as much as the very big, very black, and incredibly ominous clouds that were rushing toward them from the west. 

The east was clear. So they ran that way. 

"You know," said Iori, "I sure hope we don't get any black clouds appearing in this direction. It takes so long to iron the wrinkles out of this shirt if it gets wet." 

"The sky looks pretty clear to me," said Ken. 

"So you're going to fix it, huh?" asked Iori. 

"Not even I could control the weather when I was the Kaizer," shot back Ken. "Just remember I'm on your side, now!" 

"Miyako, are you getting a signal from any TV yet?" asked Takeru. "I'd prefer not to get rained on, either." 

"Coming up!" said Miyako. "But from the looks of it, it will take us about five minutes to get there." 

"Maybe our digimon can take us there!" cried Daisuke. "V-mon, evolve to Lighdramon!" 

"Sorry, Daisuke," said the little blue digimon between gasps for breath. "Fighting those Veggimeon and now all this running has left me pooped! I couldn't even revert back Chibimon now!" 

"And I can't evolve either!" said Patamon. 

"Even if you could, I would prefer you got off my hat before doing so," said Takeru. "As Angemon you're not exactly _light!"_

"So let's keep going," said Hikari. 

They ran on, hoping the big black, ominous clouds from the west would not overtake then, and that the big, black, ominous clouds from the north and south would just mind their own business and not bother going to visit the clouds from the west. 

"Almost there!" cried Miyako. 

**BOOM!** The thunderclap was so loud all the kids jumped, then dove for the ground. Looking up after a few seconds, they saw the clouds from the west were no longer in the west, but now directly overhead, and it looked like the clouds from the south had come along for the show. Little splats of water now patted to ground around them. 

"Here it comes," said Cyan. "I think we're going to get a little wet." 

_[At this point is is necessary to digress somewhat from our story line to explain just who this Cyan character is. Cyan is none other than the Digimon persona of Cyan, one of the people represented by the fanfic storywriting pair **Cyan and Bradmon**. Bradmon tried to write him out of this particular fic, but Cyan simply insisted on being included. Besides, he may even be important to the plot. Bradmon doesn't really see how this could be, since the plot concerns Daisuke, and Cyan doesn't like Daisuke all that much.]_

Cyan looked up from the ground, wondering where all the narration was coming from. 

_[Also, and I give you this purely for information purposes, his Digimon is Cantomon, and he looks like a small white cougar with blue stripes. Cantomon, that is. Not Cyan. Cyan looks like a big teenager when he is in the digital world, wears armour, and carries a sword. His digimon's standard evolution path, starting from fresh form, is Callomon, Cazomon, Cantomon, Knightmon, and Paladinmon, with some other side paths for things like armour and jogress evolution.] _

"I have this sudden urge to hurt something called Bradmon," Cyan muttered. 

Now the dark clouds from the east and the south grinned wildly, and started dumping out vast amounts of water. The rain poured down in bucketfuls, in a great, unfathomable torrential downpour, so much so that even cats and dogs came down with it, meowing and barking as they gently fluttered down through the sheets of water about them. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed about them, and the wind blew with a great force. 

High up in the thundercloud, a small hailstone started traveling downward. It caught an updraft, changed directions, and went upward. It gained a little bit in size, and it felt good. 

"Mom's going to angry with me now," said Iori. "She'll probably make _me_ iron this shirt this time!" 

"If it's so tough to take care of, you do you wear it?" asked Hikari. 

"Because it helps keep me dry," said Iori. 

Takeru looked at him. "Iori, you get a new set of clothes when you travel here. I don't. So I'll be the one with the wet shirt when we get back." 

"Oh," was all Iori said in response. 

"Hey, there's one good thing about this," said Daisuke. 

"What?" asked Miyako, a little petulantly. She was not enjoying the downpour. 

Daisuke grinned broadly through the rain. "I get to see Hikari in a wet t-shirt!" 

SPLAT! Daisuke ended up face first on the ground. Looking at Takeru, Cyan said with a shrug, "I couldn't help it." 

"Shouldn't we continue looking for a TV?" asked Hikari. "If it starts to hail, I'd much rather not be here." 

"It should be pretty close," Miyako replied. She took out her digivice and started working it again, even as little chunks of white ice began pelting down through the rain. 

The little hailstone in the thundercloud came into contact with two more on its downward course, and they merged together. That felt good, too. The now much larger chunk shuddered into another updraft, slowed to a stop, and started upward again. The large hailstone felt really quite happy now, and prepared itself for its eventual journey to the earth. 

"Ow!" cried Daisuke as a small hailstone ploinked off his head. "That hurt!" 

"We'd better get out of the open!" said Cyan. "If these hailstones get much bigger we'll get mashed into a pulp!" 

"We're in luck!" said Hikari. "I can just make out the outline of a small building over there!" She pointed to the outline of a small building barely visible through the downpour. 

The children and their digimon made a dash for the shed. Fortunately for them it was unlocked: apparently the digimon have not heard of locks, so the Digidestined can get into any building they want to. The shack was made of metal, so inside it was noisy from the hail clattering off the roof. 

The hailstones got larger: pea sized, then slightly bigger than pea-sized, then slightly smaller than golf ball sized, then golf ball sized, then slightly larger than golf ball sized, then another size that is a bit larger than "slightly larger than golf ball sized" but smaller than "just smaller than baseball sized" but for which there is no common spherical object in Japan to describe it with. Fortunately the hail stopped getting larger at this point, otherwise it would have pummeled everything into the ground, even the building the digidestined took shelter in, and this story would be a lot shorter than it is. 

By now our hailstone high up in the cloud had reached a size even larger than the just smaller than baseball size we just mentioned, and it felt simply wonderful. Down it went again, and this time plowing breezily through the updraft and joyfully plummeting to the earth. 

At ground level the rain still poured down and the wind blew, and the hailstones made an unbelievable racket as they banged and plonked off of the metal roof of the house. Many of them hit the cats and dogs that were still coming down with the rain outside, and they yelped as the ice struck them. 

"The good thing is," yelled Daisuke over the roar of the wind and the banging of hailstones, "that it probably can't get much worse!" 

"Excuse me," called Hawkmon in as polite and proper a yell as he could manage, "but I think perhaps you should take a look to the west. There is something there that appears to be even more black and ominous than the black and omnious clouds!" 

They ran to a window at the back of the warehouse and looked out. An evil, dark, swirling thing could be seen twisting and writhing its way across the plain. 

"Augh!" cried Takeru. "It's a cyclone!" 

"No, a tornado!" yelled Miyako over the din. "A cyclone is a large circular weather system that generates high winds and rain, while a tornado is -" 

"SHUT UP!" said Takeru, Cyan, and Iori at the same time. 

The Great Hailstone merrily continued its downward journey, looking forward with great anticipation to its meeting with the ground. 

"I don't know about you ..." Iori began, but he couldn't make his sweet little voice be heard because of all the noise. 

"I don't know about you!" yelled Daisuke, repeating Iori's words without even knowing he had done so, "but it looks like that thing's headed our way! I think we'd better find that TV set, and fast!" 

"Got it!" Hikari cried, looking up from her pink D-3. "It's pretty close, too! This way!" 

**BOOM!** Lightning flashed very close by and sharp a crash of thunder blasted about them. The kids ran out of the barn ahead of the approaching tornado, taking care not to step on the sodden cats and dogs whimpering about their feet. Through the dark haze about them they could make out the faint glow of a forlorn TV set sitting on a wooden table set amongst a clump of bushes. The odd hailstone rapped down upon it, threatening to shatter either the case or the screen. The children pulled out their D-3s and activated them as they approached. 

"Digiport open!" Miyako shrieked. The brightness on the screen began ramping up. 

And just as they started going through, the Great Hailstone From The Western Storm completed its heroic plunge from the stratosphere and joyously smashed full force onto the TV set. It happily carried on through the casing, through the picture tube, through the delicate circuit board beneath, and then ecstatically blew itself to tiny bits on the wooden table. Rain poured into the gaping jagged hole left behind. Water met electricity. There was a loud _zap_ and a huge shower of sparks. 

The kids were hurled through the computer screen at the other end, landing in a heap against the far wall. Unscrambling themselves, they looked around, making puddles on the floor as water dripped from their clothing and hair. 

"Hey, where's Ken?" asked Hikari. 

"Maybe he didn't make it through," said Iori. "Did you hear anything funny as we came through the digiport?" 

"Yes," said Tailmon. "There was a really loud noise like thunder." 

"No, harder than that," said Patamon. "Like something hit the TV set." 

"Oh no!" Miyako shrieked. "I've lost Ken! How will I be able to live?" 

"The same way you lived before you met him!" said Hikari. "But let's see if we can find him on the computer. He's easier to trace now that he's on our side." 

Takeru went back to the computer and started the tracking program. Miyako calmed down enough to come over and watch. "Oh, there he is," she said, her voice one big sigh of relief. 

Iori squinted at the screen. "Looks like two people there. Who's that with him?" 

"I don't know," Takeru replied. "Probably Wormmon." 

"Wormmon?" asked Cyan. "Our digimon usually don't show up on the display." 

"Perhaps Ken's D-3 works differently. Or maybe it's just an echo of some sort." 

"Will he be able to make it back?" asked Daisuke. "Ken and I have something planned this evening." 

"Like what?" asked Miyako with an edge to her voice that could have sliced tissue paper. 

"Uh, he was going to help me with some homework. Then we were going to watch a couple of movies. We even planned to stay all night!" 

"What?!" exclaimed Miyako. "Just what are you and Ken planning to do together all night?" 

"Hey, it's not what you're thinking! I'm not interested in him - uh - well - I like him as a _friend_ and not just as a member of our group" - he shot a glance at Iori - "but I'm not interested in him in _that_ way and you can chase him for that if you want to because I don't really want to if you know what I mean and besides as TK can tell you I've been trying to get Hikari out on a date with me for since ever and -" 

Miyako's and Hikari's laughter finally drowned out Daisuke's frantic ramblings, and Takeru and even Iori joined in. Takeru was laughing so hard he didn't even notice Daisuke had said his name correctly. Cyan missed it, too. 

"I'm afraid you'll have to cancel the sleepover," said Miyako. "I can see him heading for another TV set, but it could be as long as an hour before he gets there. He'll be all right: he can work a digiport even faster than I can." 

"Oh well," said Daisuke, a slight downcast tone in his voice. "It doesn't really matter. And I think the rain and whatever happened when we came back have affected me, because I'm not feeling very well, and would be better off going back home, getting dry, then getting some rest. Perhaps Ken can help me with my homework tomorrow night." 

"And I'm getting cold." said Takeru. "I want to go home and get out of these wet clothes." 

"Sounds like a good idea, TK," said Daisuke. 

Again, neither Takeru nor Cyan noticed Daisuke had said Takeru's name correctly twice in a row, and that was awfully close to his record of three. 

They left the computer lab and headed for home, discussing what stories they should tell for getting completely soaked on a beautiful sunny day. 

----------------------------------------

Splish splish splish splish splash _meow_. 

"Sorry, cat." 

Splish-splash splish-splash splish splish splish-splash _woof_. 

"Go away, dog." 

Splish/splish-splash/splash splish/splash-splish/splash splash/splish-splash/splish splish/splash-splash/splish _mew._. 

"Shut up, cat." 

Splishsplashsplishsplashsplishsplashsplishsplash _woof_ zwoop "Yaugh!" **splash** "GET LOST YOU STUPID DOG!" 

"Daisuke, calm down." Ken extended a hand to Daisuke laying down in the mud, who had averted his eyes from the sidewalk they were on for just a moment and tripped over a wet dog. "Here, I'll help you up." 

"Thanks, but I think I can manage." Daisuke scrambled to his feet. "Luckily I won't be wearing these when I get back to the real world. I just hope they're clean when I return. There aren't exactly a lot of laundromats in the Digital World!" 

"They will be clean," said Ken. "Just watch your step, the cats and dogs are still pretty thick on the ground here." 

"How long before we get to that TV set?" 

"I estimate about twenty minutes. From the looks of the terrain as it appears on my D-3, we're almost out of this area. After that it should be easier walking: we shouldn't have to keep our eyes on the ground as much." 

"Okay. Thanks. Let's go." 

Daisuke, Ken, V-mon, and Wormmon started walking again down the long concrete sidewalk. The wildlife that had come down with the rain appeared to have migrated to it, for it was the driest place around. The ground on either side had been horribly churned up by the tornado, and was incredibly muddy. So the two boys had to keep a close eye on the sidewalk to avoid treading on cats and dogs laying there, drying themselves off in the brilliant sunshine. Some of the drier ones were actually quite friendly. Three dogs and two cats were now following them. 

By and by the churned up ground became less and less churned up and more and more grassland again, so the sidewalk was clearer of half dried animals. The sidewalk itself carried merrily along over hills and through dales and hollows. Water had collected in some of the dips, and a couple of times Ken and Daisuke had to remove their footwear and wade through pools that came halfway up to their knees. Two more dogs and another cat had joined them by now: the dogs and V-mon swam across, while Daisuke carried two of the cats, and Ken carried one and Wormmon. 

"I hope we don't get many more cats in this little party," said Ken. "If we have to wade through another of these small lakes we won't have enough arms to carry them." 

"We can leave them. We'll have to, in fact. There's no way we can take all of these back with us." 

"You're right. The television set is only five minutes away." 

"Good. We still on for tonight?" 

"Yes. I see no reason for a near disaster in the Digital World to change our plans. Have you figured out yet which movie you're going to rent? I'm getting _Remains of the Day_." 

"What?" asked a very puzzled Daisuke. 

"_Remains of the Day_," Ken repeated. "It's a period piece based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro about a butler in England who's completely dedicated to his work. It has received many very good reviews. What were you planning to get?" 

"_Gojira vs. the Smog Monster_." 

Ken groaned. "I expected you would get something silly like that," he said. Godzilla movies definitely were not his thing. 

They walked on. Still more cats and dogs joined them. By now they were coming in great numbers, streaming toward them like seagulls to a garbage dump. The cats, not really a herd animal, came along in a large, loose group with the boys at the centre, while the dogs merrily ran through them, jumping and leaping happily. By the time Ken and Daisuke got to the TV, no less than five hundred assorted canines and felines were with them. 

Ken's D-3 worked flawlessly. He, Daisuke, Wormmon and V-mon went into the TV, transversed the divide between the Digital World and the real, and came out in Ken's bedroom just as he had intended them to, all standing neatly side by side instead of in an undignified and embarrassing heap on the floor. 

As for the great assemblage of cats and dogs so suddenly left behind, they were amazed and perplexed by the disappearance of their gods. But quickly word spread through the crowd that they would be back again in a fierce storm and two tornadoes, and they decided to wait for them there. Unfortunately, the Digidestined never used that TV again, so the wait was a long one. Eventually the dogs set up a commune around the venerated TV set, while the cats split off singly or in groups of two or three, and dotted the hills about with small stone huts where they passed the days in quiet contemplation on these marvellous things while sunning themselves on the roofs. 

_**Narrator:** Will Cyan do hurtful things to Bradmon? Will Ken actually enjoy **Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster**? Will Iori have to iron his shirt? Find out in the next chapter of **Dual Daisuke**!_

_**Iori:** Acutally, even if you do read the next chapter, you probably won't find the answers to those questions ..._


	2. Chibimon, Ice Cream, and Movies, Oh My!

_Chapter Two_  
**Chibimon, Ice Cream, and Movies, Oh My!**

     _[It is] best to confuse only one issue at a time.  
Brian Kernihan and Dennis Ritchie, inventors of the C programming language_

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Daisuke woke the next morning at 8:30. It is not necessary to know which Daisuke is being referred to here, for both of them were awake at that time. Unfortunately, this is as unconfusing as it gets for this day. 

Over at Ken's, Daisuke sat up on the futon that had been put down for him in the living room, and shook his head. He didn't feel well at all. Shaking his head did not seem to improve matters, so Daisuke did it again. He felt even less well now, and decided against shaking his head a third time. He noticed his pants and socks laying on the floor beside him, and decided to put them on before Ken came out of his bedroom. Then he lay on his back on the futon, hoping that would help with what ever was affecting him and that shaking his head had not helped with. 

About ten minutes later Ken came out. 

"Good morning," he said to his friend. 

Daisuke murmured something unintelligible. 

Ken saw this as a good sign: Daisuke appeared to be conscious. 

"How are you this morning?" Ken asked the wild haired boy on the futon. 

Again Daisuke mumbled something unintelligible. 

"I'll get some breakfast cereal ready," said Ken, "and some toast, too. Would you like apple juice or orange juice?" 

Daisuke was not quite as unintelligible this time, and Ken interpreted his mumbling to be "orange." 

"All right. I'll be about five minutes getting everything ready. Can you be up by then?" 

_Mumble_. It sounded close enough to "yes" for Ken's satisfaction. 

In five minutes Daisuke managed to drag himself off the futon and into a chair in the kitchen. Ken put a bowl of cereal down in front of him. Noticing his friend's condition, he poured milk into the bowl for him and sprinkled a little sugar on top. 

"Thanks," mumbled Daisuke. 

"Not a problem," said Ken. He sat down at the table opposite and began eating. Daisuke picked away listlessly at his cereal. 

"Is anything wrong?" asked Ken, concerned. "You look like the Smog Monster got you last night." 

Daisuke shook his head, then suddenly remembered why he wasn't supposed to be doing that. But the effort required to keep what little cereal he had eaten to now down at least forced him to wake up a little more and focus on what was happening. 

"Sorry," he said. "For some reason I just don't feel like I'm all here this morning." 

"Oh, that's too bad," said Ken. "I wonder if there was something in what you were eating last night that didn't agree with you." 

"Maybe. Maybe not. You look all right." 

"I feel fine. If you feel as bad as you look, I think you should go back to sleep. You can sleep on the futon or in my bed, if you want to. Hopefully you'll be awake enough to come with me to the soccer game this afternoon." 

Daisuke blinked. He had forgotten about the soccer game. But somehow that didn't seem to be important now. 

"Thanks for the offer," he said, "but I think I should try to get home and sleep there. I'll be more comfortable in my own bed. I doubt I'll make to soccer game, though. It'll take a while to get back to my place, and once I sleep this off it'll be too late to head out again to the field." 

"As you wish. But drink up the orange juice. The vitamins in it will do you good." 

Daisuke did so, sipping at the orange juice, then eating a little more cereal. He left a little unfinished, drained the glass of juice, and bypassed the toast entirely. By now we was feeling a little better, but only to the point where he felt he could handle the trip back home without falling asleep halfway through. 

Just as he was getting ready to leave, he asked, "Hey, where's Chibimon? I haven't seen him all morning." 

"I don't know," Ken replied. "I'll check my bedroom." 

Ken went into his bedroom and looked around. No Chibimon, no Wormmon. He called out for them, but the only answer he got was some muffled giggling from somewhere in the room. The sounds were coming from either under the bed or inside the closet. Ken could not tell: they were very quiet, and Digimon can be notoriously difficult to find when they don't want to be found. 

Coming out of his bedroom, Ken told Daisuke, "It looks like those two are playing a game of hide-and-seek." 

Daisuke made a face. "Oh no, not again! Last time they did that they didn't come out until they got tired of playing." 

"And it kept them occupied for hours," said Ken. 

"I'll go home without him. If I wait much longer I'll miss the bus. Take care of him, will you?" 

"Of course I will, Daisuke. You go home and get some sleep." Ken opened the apartment door for his friend. 

"Sure. Bye." 

"See you later." 

Daisuke trudged toward the elevator, trying hard not to shake his head. 

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At home, the other Daisuke was feeling much better. His parents were up before him. His mother made him breakfast, which he ate quickly, then settled down to watch some Saturday morning cartoons. An hour he spent doing this, but as soon as _Tamers_ came on, he realised he hadn't seen Chibimon all morning. 

In fact, now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen Chibimon since they had been rudely thrust out of the Digital World the night before. He started wondering where his little blue friend might be. Perhaps he had teamed up with Ken and Wormmon, and had spent the night at Ken's. 

Thinking of Ken reminded him that his friend had a soccer game that afternoon. Of course! It was the perfect excuse to go over for a visit, then tag along with him to see the soccer game. He wouldn't want to miss that for the world. 

Running to the telephone, he picked it up and dailed Ken's number. It rang twice, then was picked up. 

"Moshi-Moshi," said Daisuke. 

_[At this point it is necessary to digress once again from our story line to make a minor note about Japanese cultural traditions regarding the telephone.]_

Daisuke looked around, wondering the narration was coming from. 

"Moshi-Moshi," came Ken's voice. "Daisuke?" 

_[In Japan, the person receiving a telephone call picks up the telephone and waits for the person who called him or her to say "Moshi-moshi". This is, of course, opposite from North America, where the person receiving a telephone call picks up the receiver and rudely butts in with a curt "Hello" before the caller has a chance to greet him.]_

Daisuke raised his eyebrows: he had not heard of the curious way people in the West handled answering the telephone. 

A puzzled Ken listened into the phone. He thought he had heard Daisuke greet him, but now there was silence. 

"Moshi-moshi?" said Ken again. 

Daisuke heard him this time. The previous time he had missed Ken's response because he had been distracted by the narrator. 

"Hey Ken, it's me, Daisuke! How are you?" 

"All right." Ken sounded oddly confused. "How'd you make it home so fast?" 

_Kind of an odd question_, thought Daisuke. "I took the bus like I normally do," he said. "Hey, is Chibimon over there? He wasn't with me when we returned from the Digital World yesterday." 

"Yes he was," said Ken, sounding somewhat puzzled. "He's here, but still playing hide-and-seek with Wormmon." 

"Oh, good. Would it be all right if I came over to get him? Then we could go to the soccer game together this afternoon." 

"Certainly, you can come over and get him. But are you sure you're up to the game?" 

"Of course I am! Me miss a soccer game when you're playing in it? As if! Augh, the bus is almost here. If I run I just might make it. If I don't, I'll kill half an hour at the arcade down the street while waiting for the next one. See ya!" 

And he hung up almost before Ken could say "Good-bye". 

Daisuke glanced at the clock. It was actually later than he had expected: the bus would practically be at the stop right now! He grabbed his jacket and ran out of the apartment, then waited impatiently for the elevator to come. His apartment block had three, and he jumped into the middle one when it arrived. 

No sooner had the elevator started down than his mind gave a wrenching lurch. He suddenly felt a little woozy as if his brain had turned upside-down; he found himself short of breath and his legs seemed for a moment to turn to jelly. It was over soon enough, but he wondered just what the heck it was that had come over him. 

Worse, when he got out of the building, he saw the bus he had intended to catch about three blocks down the street. 

So he went to the arcade and spent a couple hundred yen on video games. 

----------------------------------------

The other Daisuke, meanwhile, was not having a good time at all. The bus ride was rough, partly due to his lack of sleep, partly due to whatever it was that was making him feel so bad. 

And mostly due to the bus driver. 

Daisuke did not know it, but driver of the bus he was on was descended from a long line of people who had made their living digging in the soil. Some had dug ditches, others ploughed the fields for grain, some had been canal builders, and others had even dug graves. The net result was the driver had ruts and potholes in his genes. At night, his dreams invariably involved soil and shovels, turning sod, or digging holes to Belgium. At work he was strongly, if unconsciously, attracted to ruts, cracks, and potholes, and he invariably chose a path that ensured his bus would meet as many of them as possible. So well known was this tendency that the people at the transit maintenance yard would note which bus he signed out at the start of his shift, and immediately book it for repair for when he returned it a few hours later. 

Daisuke was thankful when he was finally able to get off the bus, feeling more than a little rattled. 

He plodded to the building he lived in, let himself in the security door, and was mildly surprised to find the the left hand elevator already open. He got on it and pushed the button for his floor. 

The lurch he had expected to feel as the elevator came to a stop at his floor was much, much worse than he had expected. It felt as if his brain had turned upside-down: he felt a little woozy, and his legs seemed for a moment to turn to jelly, and he found himself short of breath. He stumbled off the elevator, wondering just what the heck had hit him. 

It took him a moment to recover, then he made his way to his place. He went directly to his bedroom and flopped down on the bed, not even bothering to change into something more comfortable for sleeping. 

Three hours later his mother knocked on the door and opened it. "Daisuke?" she asked. "Daisuke, you have a phone call." She handed him the receiver from the wireless telephone. 

"Thanks," mumbled Daisuke. He put the receiver more or less to his face and said, "Moshi-moshi." 

"Hi Daisuke. It's Takeru." 

"Oh, hi TJ. What's up?" 

"A lot, actually. Some of us are going out to watch Ken's soccer game this afternoon, and then for ice cream, and after that we're thinking of taking in a movie. Do you want to come?" 

Daisuke thought about it for a moment. He could really think of only one reason to go to a movie, and was hoping she would be there. "Who all is coming?" 

"Me, Iori, Miyako, Cyan, and Ken." 

"What about Hikari?" 

There was a distinct chuckle from the other end of the line. "Are you saying you'll come only if Hikari will be there?" 

"Not really; it's just that I feel really lousy right now. I was asleep when you called." 

"Oh, sorry to hear that. So you don't think you'll be able to make it?" 

"Sorry, TP, not this time. I'm just too out of it right now, and don't think I'll be well enough this evening to enjoy it. Thanks anyways." 

"Sure. Hey, get well soon, OK?" 

"Yeah, thanks. Bye." 

"Bye." Takeru hung up. He wasn't surprised at Daisuke getting his name wrong twice in a row, for he had sounded rather spaced out. 

Daisuke put the handset down beside his bed, and went back to sleep. 

Two hours later he was rudely awakened again when Miyako called him. 

----------------------------------------

"Hi Ken!" said Daisuke enthusiastically as his friend opened the door. 

"Hello, Daisuke. You're certainly looking a lot better." 

"Of course I am. I got a little wet last night, but a good night's sleep took care of everything." 

Ken looked at Daisuke, puzzled. "But this morning you looked like you hadn't slept at all." 

"How would you know? This is the first time I've seen you today." 

"No, we saw each other this morning." 

Daisuke grinned. "Sure we did! Anyway, I'd like to see Chibimon. He's here, right?" 

"Yes. Come inside." 

Ken let Daisuke in, all the time wondering how he could have improved so much in so little time, and why he did not remember being at his place earlier in the day. It bugged him for a good fifteen minutes, and in the end he put it down to Daisuke being just a bit more scatter-brained than usual today. 

The two boys spent about an hour playing videogames before it was time to head out for the soccer game. Daisuke stuffed Chibimon onto the backpack he had brought along. Ken's mother gave them a ride to the stadium, and supplied them with cash for refreshments, and bus tickets, too. While Ken headed to the team dressing rooms to get ready for the game, Daisuke bought chips and a drink, and headed for the stands. 

As with any soccer match where Ichijouji Ken was playing, the action on the field was amazing. Daisuke watched intently, only occasionally eating a chip or taking a sip of his drink. So wrapped up in the game was he that he did not even notice Takeru and the others sit down beside him. Takeru waited a minute or so for Daisuke to notice him, and when he didn't, lightly tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Hey Daisuke, fancy meeting you here!" 

"Whoa!" cried Daisuke, leaping up. His remaining chips spilled off his lap and into the stands. He barely managed to hold on to his drink. "Heh! Hi, TK!" 

"I see you decided to show up after all," said Iori. 

"Why wouldn't I?" asked Daisuke. "I'm always in the stands when Ken's on the field." 

"But you told me earlier you were feeling too bad to come out," said Takeru. 

Daisuke looked at him funny. "No I didn't." 

"Yes, you did. I called you at home, and you sounded really zonked. And you said you'd come only if Hikari was here!" 

"And I was able to make it!" said Hikari. "Originally I couldn't, but then my mom decided I didn't need to go shopping with her this afternoon, and even gave me a ride here." 

"That's nice," said Daisuke to Hikari, then immediately turned his attention back to Takeru. "TK, when did you say were you were talking to me?" 

Iori noticed Daisuke had just said Takeru's name correctly twice. 

"I called you about 1:30. You sounded really sleepy and said I had woken you up." 

"That's impossible," said Daisuke. "I was over at Ken's to pick up Chibimon." 

"But I talked to you," said Takeru. 

"You couldn't have," said Daisuke, becoming more confused with each passing second. "The only time I've been on the phone today was to call Ken to ask if I could come over to get Chibimon." 

Takeru grinned. "Gee, Daisuke, you're a better actor than I thought you were. You're doing a great job tyring to convice me I wasn't talking to you earlier. I don't think even I could pull off that convincing a performance." Turning to the others, he asked, "He's doing really well at this, isn't he?" 

"He certainly is," said Iori. 

"He practically has me convinced," Cyan added. 

"But I really _haven't_ talked to you at all today!" cried Daisuke. 

At that, everybody burst out laughing. Daisuke's ears burned a little, but Takeru said nothing more about about it, and Daisuke decided he'd been the victim of a particularly strange practical joke. He wondered who may have set it up, and suspected Takeru and Cyan working together. 

The opposing team was losing badly by half time. High in the sky over the field, a nondescript UFO also watched the action, its alien occupants as amazed with Ken's prowess on the soccer fireld as any human spectator. 

Just before the second half of the game was about to start, Daisuke turned to Takweu and asked him, "So, do you have any plans for after the game?" 

Takeru looked back at Daisuke with a strange expression on his face. "Uh, yes ... like I told you earlier, we're planning on going out for ice cream and them to a movie." 

"And I told you I wasn't talking to you earlier!" Daisuke exclaimed. 

"It sure sounded like you to me," said Takeru. 

"Whatever!" Daisuke was clearly flustered at Takeru's insistence that they had already spoken with each other that day. But he quickly settled down. "Yeah, ice cream sounds like a neat idea." 

Then the game started, and Daisuke watched it even more intenly than the aliens in the cloaked UFO in geosynchronous orbit above Odaiba. 

----------------------------------------

The Daisuke at home was feeling better now: five hours of rest (more or less) had recharged him. He didn't quite catch everything Miyako had said to him on the phone: there was something about a soccer game that she had intended to see but had to call off at the last moment when her intended ride failed to materialize, and she had heard from Hikari he wouldn't be at the game either, and so she had decided to call him instead. 

Now she was headed over. Daisuke was glad for the company, all the more so since she would be helping him with his homework. Daisuke was particularly weak at mathematics and language arts, both of which Miyako knew well, and was willing to teach. 

He would have preferred having Hikari as a tutor, but she seemed more interested in Takeru lately, and Miyako was a decent teacher. 

They worked together on a Japanese essay for about an hour. Then Miyako looked at the clock and exclaimed, "Hey, the gang just might be at the Mount Fuji Cone Factory for ice cream in a little while! Do you want to go there and see if we can meet them?" 

"Sure!" said Daisuke. "Maybe I'll get a chance to talk to Hikari." 

Miyako giggled. "You're still chasing after her?" 

"Of course," said Daisuke. "She may be more interested in TQ now, but I'm going to get her for myself one of these days. And I bet the reason you want to go there is so you can sit across from Ken and stare at him the whole time." 

"I like him, but not that much!" 

"Oh, I'm sure you do," said Daisuke, and Miyako said nothing to counter him. 

"Son," asked his father as he and Miyako were heading out, "were you planning on coming with us to the International Food Festival this evening?" 

"Of course I was," Daisuke replied, grinnng. "If there's food involved, I'm interested!" 

For the last few years they had gone as a family to the Odaiba International Food Festival, where restaurants from all over town gathered to show off their menus and provide small meals to the public (for a rather hefty price). 

"All right," said Daisuke's father. "Make it back as soon as you can. I want to get there early and avoid the worst of the crowds." 

Leaving the apartment complex Daisuke lived in, they prepared for a fifteen minute stroll to the ice cream parlour. But as luck would have it, a bus was pulling up to the stop as soon as they stepped out the door, so they made a dash for it. They got there just in time, boarded the bus, paid the driver, and found seats. 

The bus trip was almost completely uneventful. But about halfway there, just as another bus passed them going the other way, Daisuke's mind gave a sudden lurch. He found himself short of breath, and his legs seemed for a moment to turn to jelly. He felt a little woozy as if his brain had turned upside-down. He clutched on to a hand-bar on the back of the seat in front, wondering just what on earth had hit him -- again. 

"Are you all right?" asked Miyako, breathlessly. 

"I'm not sure," Daisuke replied. "This is the second time today this has happened. I hope it's nothing serious." 

"I'm sure you'll get over it soon. Not too much can keep Motomiya Daisuke down." 

Daisuke grinned back at her. Already he was feeling better. 

Arriving at the Mount Fuji Cone Factory a few minutes later, they looked around with disappointment. The place was rather empty, and they saw no sign of their friends. Worse, they had no idea if they had missed them, or if they were yet to come. So they decided to get something and eat it there while waiting. 

It was a puzzled Daisuke who came to the table with a banana split. "That was really strange," he told Miyako. 

"What was?" 

"The guy behind the counter said I must really like these," Daisuke explained. "When I asked why, he said it was the second one I had bought today." 

Miyako's eyes opened wide. "What?" 

"I don't know. I sure wasn't in the mood for ice cream before now. And you know what he said next?" 

"No. What?" 

"He asked, `Do you want this one with extra chocolate and no pineapple like the last one?' I mean, _how_ did he know I was going to order that? I haven't been here in nearly two months, and the last time I got a strawberry milkshake." 

Miyako grinned. "Maybe you have a twin brother separated from you at birth and who has just moved back to Odaiba!" 

"What? _Two_ of me running around?" asked Daisuke. 

"As if one wasn't bad enough!" Both of them laughed hysterically. 

They finished their ice cream, but without their friends, for they did not show up. They returned to Daisuke's place. To his surprise, he had to unlock to door to his apartment: neither of his parents were there. It was obvious they had gone to the food festival without him. Daisuke wondered why, briefly, then helped himself to some food in the refrigerator, and he and Miyako watched television and worked on math. 

Miyako left at 8:45. Daisuke watched some more TV, then went to bed at midnight when his parents still had not come back home. 

Daisuke's parents had gone to the food show. While there they met up with some old friends they had not seen in over a decade, and on a whim went out to a bar with them. Driving home later they ran over a spike on the road. There was a considerable delay while they waited for the JAA to come and fix their flat tire--neither of them had ever learned how to do it--and it was well after 2:00 AM before they got home. 

They noticed the door to Daisuke's bedroom was closed, but that was normal for him whether he was at home or not. They knew he wasn't, of course: shortly after leaving with Miyako, he had called them from the Mount Fuji Cone Factory to ask if he could sleep over at TK's that night. 

----------------------------------------

"All right! You won!" cried Takeru when they finally met up with Ken after the game. 

"Amazing goal at the end!" said Daisuke. "I don't think I've seen a play quite like that since the World Championship semi-final two years ago!" 

"Thanks, guys," said Ken. He was actually mildly embarrassed at all the attention. He was good at soccer, he knew, but really did not see the need for accolades over something that came so naturally to him. 

"Now let's go get that ice cream," said Hikari. "Mount Fuji Cone Factory, here we come!" 

The Mount Fuji Cone Factory was not the favourite of the group, being a fair distance from the soccer stadium. But it was handy in that it was on the same bus route as the movie theatre they were going to. 

What they didn't know was the establishment had been built over a seismic fault on the island, and living under the fault was a Good Luck dragon. While the dragon slept, Good Luck particles would spontaneously emit from its body and travel upward through the fault, and spill out when they reached the surface. 

Thus it was impossible for any business built on that spot to fail. 

The previous owner of the site had retired comfortably after forty years of selling second hand goods for less than he had bought them for, and the owner before him had run a successful accountancy firm despite the fact he had trained as butcher and did not know up from down on his abacus. The current owners were puzzled by the fact their business did better in winter than in summer. 

The place was rather quiet when they arrived. There was practically no-one lining up for ice cream, so Takeru, Hikari, Daisuke, Cyan, and Iori were able to get their treats quickly. Takeru and Hikari went together on a Cookie Ice Cream Mountain and two fountain drinks, Cyan got a butterscotch sundae with a touch of maple syrup (a specialty of the Factory, and why Cyan liked going there more than any other place), and Iori purchased a simple large soft ice cream cone with a chocolate dip. 

And you have probably figured out by now that Daisuke ordered a banana split with extra chocolate instead of pineapple. 

The five of them found an empty table and sat down, Daisuke beside Takeru. After a few minutes, Daisuke unexpectedly asked, "TK, do you think I could sleep over at your place tonight?" 

Takeru looked at Daisuke, surprised by the sudden question. "Yeah, I guess so. Any particular reason?" 

"No, not really. It's just I wanted a bit of a change." 

"A bit of a change?" came Ken's voice. "You were over at my place last night." 

"You were?" asked Hikari. 

"No, I wasn't. I slept at home last night." 

Iori asked, "So why does Ken think you were over at his place?" 

Now it was Ken's turn to wonder if everyone else had gone crazy. He did not say anything, but the look he gave Daisuke was somwhere between bemusement and a glare. Daisuke felt uncomfortable: this reminded him a tad too much of the conversation he'd had with Takeru earlier at the soccer match. 

There was a pay phone at the ice cream parlour, so Takeru called home to ask if he could have Daisuke over for the night. The response was positive. Then Daisuke called his parents to ask permission, and was successful, although he did wonder when his mother asked him why he had changed his mind about going to the International Food Fair. 

"All right!" said Daisuke, returning to the table. "Thanks, TK." 

Iori blinked in amazement. Daisuke had actually said Takeru's name correctly at least four times in a row, if he was counting correctly. Even Cyan was starting to notice. 

"Now that that's settled," said Takeru, "we have to figure out where you're going to sleep." 

"Don't you have two bedrooms there?" asked Daisuke. "All we need is two." 

Cyan looked up from his sundae for a moment and growled, "Three." 

"Why three?" asked Daisuke. 

"Because I happen to like sleeping once in a while too." 

_[At this point it is necessary to depart from our story line once again to explain the reasons for Cyan being in Japan. Cyan is actually --]_

Although the others looked around to see where the narration was coming from, Cyan looked straight up and said testily, "Shut up! I can do this myself!" 

_[Oh, sorry.]_

Returning his gaze to Daisuke, he explained. "In case you've forgotten, I'm from Canada. My home town was destroyed by Apocalymon, so I'm staying here in Japan until I grow up and can return. Or not return, if I decide to. Until then, I'm basically staying with TK. So the extra bedroom is pretty much _my_ bedroom now, so you'll have to find somewhere else to crash!" 

And he did not speak to Daisuke again for a couple of hours. 

They ate more quickly than they wanted to, for the next bus was a mere half hour after the first. They sent Iori to hold up the bus for a few moments when it arrived, to give them time to toss their garbage into a nearby bin, then boarded it for the trip to the movie theatre. 

Only a couple of minutes after heading out, Daisuke's mind gave a sudden lurch. His legs seemed for a moment to turn to jelly, and he found himself short of breath. It felt like his brain had turned upside-down and he felt a little woozy. Grabbing on to the hand rail on the back of the seat in front of him, he wondered just what the heck it was that had hit him again. 

"Are you all right?" asked Iori, who was sitting on the seat beside him. 

"I think so," Daisuke replied. "Except this is the second time this has happened to me today. 

"If it gets any worse, you should consider going to a hospital to get yourself checked out." 

"T'm sure I'll live. I'm starting to feel better already." 

The rest of the bus ride went without incident. They got off at the cinema, where they bought tickets for _Daughters of the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles_, a runaway hit with the under thirteen crowd that summer. There was just enough yen available for popcorn and drinks, so they bought some from the concession and headed into the theatre to find seats. 

They were in luck: half way to the back of the house was a row with six empty seats. They settled into them: Ken, Daisuke, Takeru, Hikari, Cyan, and Iori. Noticing Cyan beside her, Hikari did a bit of a double-take. She had expected Daisuke to sit on the side not occupied by Takeru. But he was two seats down, sitting beside Takeru, chatting with him and offering him popcorn. It was unusual behaviour for him, but Hikari did not feel put out: Daisuke would not be bugging her through the film with silly comments and jokes, and Cyan was almost as quiet as Iori. 

_[At this point it is necessary once again to depart from our main story line and speak briefly on the Chinese art of **Feng Shui**. Practised for thousands of years, Feng Shui (which is short hand for the phrase "the energy dissipated by the wind stops at the boundary of water") deals with the channeling of chi (or qi) yang energy and the blocking of bad yin energy within a structure.]_

No one seemed to notice except Cyan. He wondered what the sudden interest was in Feng Shui, expecially since this story is set in Japan and not China. 

_[The ideal building is sited such that only chi energy enters and moves throughout it, while negative energy is prevented from entering, moving about, or collecting within. Chi energy typically is generated by slow moving rivers or streets with slow traffic, while negative energy can be generated by long, narrow streets, dark passages, fast rivers, graveyards, and pointy jaggy things.]_

"I'd much rather listen to the movie," Cyan muttered. 

"What was that?" whispered Iori beside him. 

"Oh, sorry. Nothing ..." 

_[The theatre in which the Digidestined are now sitting has a modern hodgepodge design with multiple roof levels, exposed rafters, long darkened hallways, rough stucco on the interior walls, and sharply angled counters in the concession area. Worse, it is built on the cross-piece of a "T" intersection, with the front doors staring down a long street populated with tall buildings._

_In short, the place is a Feng Shui disaster area.]_

"Are you finished yet?" whisperered Cyan. 

"What?" asked Hikari. 

"Never mind ..." 

_[Also, since some readers may be familiar with Japanese and could be offended, it is necessary to warn you that shortly Cyan will use the word "kutabare." It translates into English as a couple of words that we really should not print here. But we can print "off".]_

_I really don't like where this is going_, thought Cyan. He gripped hard on the handrails of his seat, trying to contain his growing annoyance at the constant interruptions. 

Very shortly he would be wishing for the interruptions to return. The last scene of the movie took a decided turn for the worse. 

The daughters of the TMNT had just saved the world from a horrible fate of some sort, and there was great jubilation and celebration in the streets. The camera panned across the crowd and focused on a quartet of large ladies boisterously belting out a gospel number, backed up with a cameo from the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir:      Halleluja! _Halleluja!_  
What a day! _Halleluja!_  
Sunshine around! _What a day!_  
Halleluja! _Sunshine around!_

Cyan jumped up but could not flee, hemmed in as he was on all sides by patrons. The singing continued as the credits rolled, loud music blasting from the speakers. Cyan's composure became less and less composed. 

Cyan decidedly did not like gospel music. 

Spying a escape route three rows back, he jumped over the seats and made his way over to the aisles. He pushed through the crowd, desperately trying to get away from the squawking and wailing in the theatre. Dashing through the concession area, he finally made his way outside. On the sidewalk he waited for his friends to come out, while great amounts of negative _yin_ energy sped down the long street in front and swirled about him. He was still fuming, generating no small amount of negative energy himself. 

The others came out a couple of minutes later. Daisuke was talking excitedly to Takeru. 

"Wow! What a cool movie!" 

"Yeah!" said Hikari. "I liked the part where they saved their boyfriends from the street gang." 

Daisuke laguhed. "The part I really liked was where Maria was being controlled by the bad guy and she actually turned around and started wailing on Briti and Isabella!" 

Cyan gleared at Daisuke. "It's not that funny when you get things backwards -- especially when you can't help it." 

"What do you mean, not funny?" asked Dasuke. "The look on their faces when she whacked her cousin with the whip was priceless!" He burst out laughing. 

But Cyan was not amused. "Do you realise how it would feel if that happened to you? I don't see anything funny in it all all." 

"There you go--raining on our parade again! Hey, even TK thought it was funny!" 

In all the excitement, Iori did not notice Daisuke had said Takeru's name correctly yet again. 

By now it was obvious to everyone that Daisuke had seriously misjudged Cyan's state of mind. And not familiar with Feng Shui, they could not have known that carrying on an argument in such an inauspicious place was a very bad idea indeed. 

"I somehow doubt TK of all people would find that funny." 

"Hey! Lighten up already!" said Daisuke. "That Perilousmon thing was a long time ago. Gee, you sure know how to hold on to a grudge!" 

Cyan's eyes blazed. He clenched his hand into a fist and drew it back. 

But several factors intervened and he never did throw the punch. For one, Takeru stepped between Daisuke and Cyan; second, Ken drew Daisuke back; third, Iori stepped behind Cyan and grabbed his other arm. 

And the most important factor came in the form of a large truck that rolled to a stop in front of the theatre. In doing so, it blocked the onrushing _yin_ energy from the street. It was enough to prevent the situation from escalating out of control. Cyan's anger diminished a little: he kept his fist raised but did not move it. 

"You know what, Daisuke?" he hissed. "_Kutabare!_" 

Iori gasped. His tender ears were not used to that sort of language, especially from his digidestined friends. 

Cyan dropped his upraised arm and continued. "TK, I'm outta here! Just give him my room for the night! I'm not gonna need it!" 

He turned on his heel and stalked away, fist still clenched. Hikari looked around at the others, but they made no attempt to follow, so she ran after him alone. 

----------------------------------------

Cyan tramped down the long street away from the theatre, not really caring where he was going. The negative energy created by the buildings and channeled by the street mixed in with his own. 

Only when he stepped off the street into a small park did he begin to settle down: the trees generated good energy, as did the duck pond in the park. A lady at the pond was tossing small pieces of bread to the ducks. Nearby, a girl of about Cyan's age was leaning against a tree, watching her mother feed the ducks, a scowl on her face. 

Cyan didn't see either the lady or the girl. He sat down heavily on a bench and scowled more than even the girl. 

For the record, neither the lady nor the ducks were scowling. 

Hikari entered the park, too. She had followed Cyan at a discreet distance. Now she walked down the path to where he was sitting, and stopped nearby. Cyan looked up at her. 

Hikari wasn't scowling either. She looked more sad than anything else. She looked at Cyan but said nothing. 

There are times when people get to know each other well enough that they don't really need to say anything to each other at all: all it takes is a simple glance to see how the other person is sitting, or notice that one eyebrow is precisely 0.7 millimetres higher than the other, or percieve exactly how they are holding their toast, to know just what that person is thinking. At times like these words are unnecessary, and in fact only get in the way and clutter up the peace and serenity in life. 

Except Hikari was not silent for that reason. 

It was that she just could not think of anything to say. 

But Cyan finally did. 

"What's wrong?" he asked. 

"I was going to ask you that," said Hikari, now wondering why just moments before she was unable to think of anything to say. "Why did you run out of the theatre like that?" 

"You don't know just how little I can stand that `music'," Cyan replied. 

"The music may not have been the best, but is that any reason to take a swipe at Daisuke like that?" 

"That had nothing to do with it. Daisuke chose the wrong time to see what happens when you try pushing me too far." 

Hikari had to agree with that. "He does seem to do that, doesn't he? And it doesn't help that he wasn't around when ... when that Perilousmon incident happened." 

Cyan made a face. "He should bloody well know better than to rub that in." 

"You're right, he should. Hopefully after tonight he'll know better." 

"I somehow doubt that." If nothing else, Cyan was confident in his belief that Daisuke would always be an idiot. "Why'd you follow me, anyway?" 

"I'm not sure, really. But I am wondering what you're going to do for the rest of the night. You made it abundantly clear you were not going back to Takeru's." 

"And stay around Daisuke? Yeah, right. I don't know. I could just stay here, or go across town to Matt's ... for all I care I'll just beat it out of here and disappear again. Not like I belong here." 

"You're not the only one who feels that way," came a voice from behind him. Cyan turned his head to see a red haired girl looking at him. She had obviously overheard his comment. Having made eye contact, she continued. 

"So you plan to get out of here?" 

"Who wants to know?" asked Cyan. There was only a small amount of irritation in his voice. 

"Someone who wants to leave as much as you do, and could use a partner, just like you would," the girl replied mysteriously. 

Cyan was amazed. He had never met this girl at all before in his life, and yet he felt a kinship here as though he had known her a long time. 

But not long enough that he could tell her emotions by seeing to the tenth part of a millimetre how much higher was one eyebrow than the other. 

"I'd be more careful saying that, if I were you," he told her kindly. "You really can't appreciate a home until you suddenly don't have one." 

"Ruki!" called the lady over by the duck pond. "Ruki! I'm done with the ducks. Now we have to go and get you fitted for a new dress." 

"What am I being punished for this time?" the girl yelled back at her mother. Glancing at Cyan, she said, "See why I want to get out of here?" 

Then she turned and dashed out of the park. Her mother quickly ran after her. 

Now she had a scowl on her face. 

Hikari got Cyan's attention, then said, "Yamato's a fair distance from here ... I can give you a place to stay for tonight, if you can talk nicely to my mom." 

"If she's more intelligent than Daisuke, I can handle it." 

"Easily more intelligent. Let's go." 

They chose a different route out of the park, not wanting to go back to the long street with all its _yin_ energy. Not that the negative energy was the reason they avoided the street. They just did not like the traffic noise. 

_**Narrator:** Will Cyan stop producing negative energy? Will Daisuke ever figure out this is not a practical joke? Will Takeru notice Daisuke says his name correctly? Find out in the next chapter of **Dual Daisuke!**_

_**Miyako:** As Iori said the last time, even reading the chapter probably won't lead to the answers ... and he was right ..._

----------------------------------------

**Author's notes.** This was a tough chapter to write, which is why it was so long in getting posted. Working out the movements of the two Daisukes was a real challenge, because it had to fit and flow together without looking too contrived. I spent a week researching Feng Shui just for the few lines I included in the text. And writing a fight scene while still trying to keep it humourous is hard! 

I also ended up writing way more words than I had intended to. Don't worry: the next chapter will be much shorter, I promise! 

**Ishida316,** you are absolutely correct, I do read "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Douglas Adams' madcap vision of the future is probably closer to the way it will actually be than anything written by the Star Trek crew.  
**STF,** Thank you for your word of support. :)  
**Lucky Ishida,** yes, I thought the concept was interesting, which is why I wrote this fic.  
**Hezato no Miko,** here is the next part you were looking for. Hope you enjoyed it! 

And thanks to everyone who takes the time to plough through my (at times) obtuse prose and then takes even more time to write a review. You don't know just how appreciated you are.


	3. Of Friends, Milk, and Soccer

_Chapter Three_  
**Of Friends, Milk, and Soccer**

     _Do not flame the work of fan fiction writers, for they are not very subtle and write nasty things when provoked.  
Paraphrase of a tagline seen on alt.music.filk, itself a paraphrase from **The Lord of the Rings**._

----------------------------------------

Sunday morning, and the Daisuke sleeping over at Takeru's was awake first. He had not slept very well at all, what with being in a strange apartment and all. 

He tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes, but sleep was hiding in an area of his brain rather removed from his eyes, so rubbing them did no good at all. He lay back on the bed and dozed fitfully. 

"Wake up, sleepyhead!" 

Daisuke opened his eyes to see Takeru grinning at him, looking quite awake. Daisuke smiled back at him. 

"Morning, TK." 

"How'd you sleep?" 

"Not all that well." 

"Sorry to hear that." 

"I think I'll be all right, though." Daisuke streched, yawned widely, and sat up on the bed. Then he started rummaging among the sheets for his shirt. 

"You sleep without a shirt?" asked Takeru. 

"Not usually," Daisuke replied. "But your place is a lot warmer than mine, so I took it off hoping it would help me sleep better. Oh, here it is." 

"I'll go and let you get dressed." 

"It's all right--you can stay," said Daisuke. "You don't have to leave. Really." 

Takeru stayed in the room. Daisuke extracted his shirt from a tangle of topsheet and blankets, then set it aside. Throwing off the sheets, he sat on the bed in his underwear while finding and putting on his socks. He stood up, pulled on his shirt, then found his pants and put them on as well. Last of all he picked up his goggles from the side table and placed them on his head. 

Takeru watched this performance with some surprise, and mild embarrassment. He wondered if Daisuke was actually making a show of his body: like most eleven year olds, both were usually mortified at the thought of being seen less than fully clothed. 

They ate a breakfast prepared by Takeru's mother, then headed back to the living room and the videogame console. Takeru liked challenging RPGs like _Lufia 2_, but he knew Daisuke perferred first person shoot-em-ups. So he asked Daisuke what he felt like playing. 

"Whatever you want," was his friend's response. 

Takeru shrugged, searched through his collection of game cartridges, and put _Super Smash Brothers_ into the machine. 

The action was fast and furious, the boys smashing both computer generated targets and each other off the screen. They squeaked and squealed with excitement as young boys do when occupied with a fast paced game. Yet after only half an hour of this, Daisuke made an unusual request. 

"Can you switch the game into co-operative mode?" he asked. 

Takeru's controller slipped from his fingers and landed in his lap. 

"What did you say?" he asked. 

"I just wondered if you could switch the game into co-operative mode," said Daisuke. 

"Why?" 

"I don't really feel like running around the game attacking you." 

Takeru forgot about his controller and turned to look at Daisuke, confused. "What are you talking about? You've never had a problem with that before--in fact, the more frags you could get on me, the happier you were!" 

"It just feels like I'm attacking a friend, that's all," Daisuke replied. 

"Like I said, it's never bothered you before now. Why the concern all of a sudden?" 

"It's like, well ... it's like for the first time I've actually seen you as a real friend--not just someone I hang around with, play games with, or go into the Digital World and blow apart control spires with. So it doesn't feel right for me to go beating you up in the game." 

"Makes sense, sort of," said Takeru. 

Picking up his controller, he called up the settings and made a quick modification. 

Now they were playing together, each one looking out only for Mario and Luigi instead of each other. Daisuke was in a chatty mood, and kept the conversation going while pointing, clicking, and fighting characters on the TV screen. 

"I mean, I was really surprised when XV-mon and Stingmon jogressed. I really don't know why it wasn't Angemon and XV-mon." 

Blam! Yoshi toppled over, victim of a pistol shot from Daisuke. 

"That one's easy to answer," said Takeru. "You were the first to accept Ken as one of us, instead of always seeing him as the Digimon Kaizer." 

Donkey Kong vanished in a puff of smoke, being on the receiving end of Takeru's laser gun. 

"Yeah, that's right. But it be a lot better if XV-mon could jogress with Angemon. That would be a really neat jogress shinka!" 

He threw a Bob-omb at Pikachu and blasted him into oblivion. 

"But why would they jogress?" asked Takeru. For some reason he was starting to feel uncomfortable. He noticed, for the first time, that ever since they had sat down on the floor to play, Daisuke had been so close they were always touching each other. 

"Because of the friendship we have, and Chibimon's friendship with Patamon." He looked away from the TV set and at Takeru. "And I mean really friends, not some mushy thing like Hikari." 

Takeru's blue eyes went wide open and his jaw dropped. "What do you mean, _some mushy thing like Hikari?_ I thought you and me were kinda in competition for her." 

"Me in competition with you for Hikari?" asked Daisuke. He sounded incredulous, as though he had never heard of such a thing before. "It's more like Hikari's in competition with me for your time and attention." 

Takeru was starting to freak out. He jumped up from floor, his game controller landing with a soft _thud_ on the carpet. 

"Are you all right, Daisuke?" he sweatdropped. "You've been acting strange ever since we got back from the Digital World on Friday." 

"Sure I'm all right," Daisuke replied. "OK, I've had a couple of those light headed things happen to me, but, yeah I'm all right. Or at least I would be if it wasn't for you and Cyan trying to confuse the heck out of me all the time." 

"What? You're talking about yesterday?" 

"Yes, yesterday, when you insisted you had talked to me on the phone, but I had been at Ken's almost all day." 

"Whoa, Daisuke ... slow down a bit there. I did call you at home, and your mom answered, and she gave the phone to you. You sounded tired." 

Daisuke scratched his head. "I have no memory of that at all," he said. He sounded a little worried. "Maybe I'm not really all here. Or I'm too tired. Maybe I should go home and get some sleep." 

"Yeah, maybe you should. You had a pretty hectic day yesterday, what with the soccer match and the movie and all." 

"You're right, I did. Getting a bit more sleep sounds like a good idea. Uh, before I go, can I get something to drink? I'm thisty." 

"Sure," said Takeru. "Do you want water, milk, or some fruit juice?" 

"Milk. The coach says I should drink it." 

"All right. I'll get you some." 

They headed into the kitchen. Takeru pulled a fresh carton of milk out of the fridge, opened it, and poured out a small glass for Daisuke. He was just about to pour one himself when he stopped. 

"Oh! This is skim milk," he said. "I don't really like it. Do you want it?" 

"The whole carton?" asked Daisuke. 

"Sure." Takeru checked the refrigerator. "I see Mom's got two other cartons of the stuff I like here, so I have no problem giving that one to you." 

"Gee, thanks, TK," said Daisuke. 

They went to the door, where Daisuke put on his shoes and jacket, then bundled Chibimon into his backpack and headed for home. Iori was nowhere to be found, so no one realised Daisuke had said Takeru's name correctly twice that morning. 

In the same manner that a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a storm in North America a week later, so it was that Takeru's seemingly innocuous act of giving a carton of milk to Daisuke saved Tokyo. For in that carton was a most unusual bacterial culture, which, had the carton been returned to the fridge, would have developed a mutation introduced via a mould spore from a potato decomposing unnoticed in the lower rack. The culture would have grown and flourished as the milk sat undrank in the fridge, and a week later when Takeru's mother poured it down the drain, the culture would have reacted with some _cyclosporidium_ parasites in Tokyo bay, and that in turn would have caused an irritable bowel problem in the gojira monster sleeping at the bottom of the bay. Thus awakened, and in a more foul mood than normal from a bad case of the runs, the monster would have levelled a good part of Tokyo before collapsing from dehydration. 

In fact, the world's major cities suffer from near disasters like this all the time, and the only reason they don't happen more often is because overall humans are a pretty darned lucky lot. And the rare time it does happen, it is hushed up by the government because it is very difficult formulating public policy to deal with ravaging monsters, and they find it much easier simply to placate the populace by insisting they don't exst. 

Daisuke had the misfortune to get the same bus driver the other one had the misfortune to get the day before. The ride was noisy and jarring, shaking and rattling both Daisuke and Chibimon. After getting off, he walked unsteadily toward the apartment block he lived in, on the way passing by the store run by Miyako's parents. 

You can probably guess what happened next. 

His mind gave a sudden lurch. He felt a little woozy, as if his brain had turned upside-down; his legs seemed for a moment to turn to jelly, and he found himself short of breath. He clutched his head and staggered like a drunk for several feet before stopping and leaning back against a wall. There came a muffled squeak from his backpack, and Daisuke realised he was inadvertantly compressing Chibimon. Carefully he pulled away, and made his way home. 

----------------------------------------

The other Daisuke, of course, was at home, missing his little blue digimon. He had not seen Chibimon since leaving him playing hide-and-seek with Leafmon at Ken's the day before. Figuring he could kill a couple of hours travelling across town and back to get him, he picked up the telephone and called Ken. 

"Moshi-moshi," he said when the line was picked up at the other end. 

"Moshi-moshi," came Ken's voice from the other end. 

"Hey, Ken. I don't have that much to do today, so I was wondering if I could come over to get Chibimon." 

There was a distinct pause at the other end of the line, then Ken said, "Uh, you did that yesterday, Daisuke." 

_Oh, no, not Ken too!_ thought Daisuke. _TD and Cyan playing this game was confusing enough!_

"What?" asked Daisuke into the reciever. "I couldn't have! I came home, crashed for the rest of the morning, and spent the afternoon with Miyako who helped me with my homework." 

"You must have been busy," said Ken. "You found enough time to come and see my soccer game, then come with us to a movie. Last I heard you were sleeping over at Takeru's." 

"No way I could have done that!" Daisuke exclaimed. "I was with Miyako pretty much the whole time, and after she left I went to bed. At home." 

"But you were with me, and Takeru, and Cyan and Hikari and Iori at the movie theatre. Don't you remember the fight you had with Cyan?" 

"Cyan? Fight?" 

Daisuke was feeling both bewildered and a little ill. What was happening to him? Why did everyone around him see him doing things he had no memory of? 

"How could I have gotten into a fight with Cyan?" he asked Ken. "I haven't seen him since Friday!" 

"Well," said Ken, ignoring Daisuke's comment about not seeing Cyan at all on Saturday, "you said something to him he didn't like outside the movie theatre last night, and he got so mad he almost punched you out. Then he stormed off, yelling at Takeru that you could sleep in his bed at Takeru's place." 

"But I wasn't at TG's last night!" Daisuke was almost shouting by now. "I remember talking to him on the phone about going to a movie, but I wasn't interested because I was so tired. And now you're telling me I actually went to the movie?" 

"Of course you did. You came to my soccer game, went with us for ice cream at the Mount Fuji Cone Factory, and after that we all went to see _Daughters of the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles_." 

"Hold it! Hold it! I'm planning on going to _Daughters of the TMNT_, but I haven't yet! And, yeah, I was at the Mount Fuji Cone Factory yesterday, but I went with Miyako, not you guys!" 

"With Miyako?" asked Ken. "Miyako wasn't with us." 

"Of course she wasn't--she was with me!" Daisuke cried. 

"You were with _us_, Daisuke. I remember it was while you were eating your bannana split at the Cone Factory that you asked Takeru if you could sleep over at his place. He said --" 

Daisuke interrupted again, desparate to make some sense out of this insane conversation. "Why would I want to sleep over at Takeru's? He's a nice guy and all, but I can't stand the way he and Cyan always get on my case whenever I want to do something to help the Digital World!" 

"That much we can agree on," said Ken. "Daisuke, none of this is making much sense. Are you sure you're all right? Remember those dizzy spells you had yesterday?" 

"Do I? Yeah, sure I do. They really loop me out. It's almost like my brain turns upside down--I feel woozy and short of breath--and my legs feel like they turn to jelly!" 

Up to now Ken was well on track to figuring out the whole crazy scenario. But hearing Daisuke was having dizzy spells convinced him he was dealing with only one instance of his friend. Of course, he could not have suspected, even if he knew there were two Daisukes, that despite their different experiences he just happened to ask about the one thing that was common to them both. 

"It appears it's affecting your memory, too," said Ken. "It's starting to sound pretty serious. Daisuke, I can't force you to, but I think you should go see a doctor about it." 

"Oh, man!" groaned Daisuke. "I'm only eleven! I'm too young to die!" 

"I didn't say it was life threatening. But it's something you really should get checked out." 

"Yeah, maybe you're right. If this goes on much longer I won't know if I'm coming or going. Speaking of which, should I be coming over to get Chibimon?" 

"No need to--he isn't here. Listen, why don't you call Takeru and ask him if Chibimon's over there. Maybe he went home with Patamon for some reason." 

"Yeah, maybe. But I'm kinda afraid to call TB right now. Who knows what he'll say about what I was doing last night!" 

"Same as I am, actually," said Ken. "He was with us." 

"Whatever. All right, Ken, I guess I won't bother coming over today. Hopefully Chibimon will show up when we go to school tomorrow. See you later." 

"Bye, Daisuke. Stay well." 

"Thanks. Bye." 

Daisuke put down the receiver, feeling not at all well. He was debating whether or not to call TK when his mother called from the kitchen. 

"Daisuke, dear, we're all out of milk. Can I get you to go down to Inoue's store to get some?" 

"Sure, Mom." _Anything to get out of this place for a bit and clear my head,_ he thought. 

Of course, his head would not clear up any time soon. His mother gave him some money. He left the apartment, rode the elevator down to street level, crossed, and entered the store. No sooner was he through the door than a young boy with a backpack came around the corner and jauntily walked past him. 

If you haven't figured out the pattern by now, you really have not been paying attention to this story. 

Suddenly, Daisuke's mind gave a lurch. His legs seemed for a moment to turn to jelly. He found himself short of breath and felt a little woozy, as if his brain had turned upside-down. 

It was bad enough that his mind was alreay spinning from his conversation with Ken. Now it was going round and round like a frog in tumble dryer. He stumbled. His arms went wide, grasping for something solid to catch on to. His hands grabbed hold of a shelving unit, but the shelf was loose and disassembled as he put his weight on it. With a horrendous crash, shelf, boy, and tinned pineapple collapsed to the floor. 

"Wow, Daisuke!" came a voice. "What's got into you?" 

Daisuke looked up from amongst the pinenapple tins into Taichi's face. 

"Oh--heh--fancy meeting you here!" he said, putting on a ragged grin. 

Miyako's mother came around the corner of the aisle. 

"What happened?" 

"Uh, well, I just was walking down here and I kinda bumped into this shelf and the next thing I knew everything was on the floor!" 

"Oh, those silly shelves!" exclaimed Mrs. Inoue. "I keep asking for stronger ones, especially for the tinned goods because these ones simply aren't strong enough!" 

"Look on the bright side," said Taichi. "At least you didn't bump into the pickles on the other side!" 

Daisuke looked at the shelf opposite the fallen one. As Taichi had said, it was filled with pickles in glass jars. 

Indeed, Daisuke was most fortunate: the pickles carried a positive ionic charge, while the tinned pineapple carried a negative charge. Since Daisuke was positively charged, the charge in the pickles repelled him ever so slightly while the pineapple attracted him ever so slightly, and between the two of them they prevented a very large mess indeed. 

"If you don't mind, Mrs. Inoue," said Taichi, "I can put this back for you." 

"Would you?" asked the shopkeeper. "It would be most appreciated." 

"No problem." 

Daisuke got up from amid the pineapple, and he and Taichi spent the next few minutes replacing the shelf and restocking the tins. 

When they were done, Taichi asked Daisuke, "So, you got any plans for the day?" 

"No," Daisuke replied. "Why?" 

"Well, me and some friends are having a pick-up soccer game in the park. It'd be great having you on my team. Wanna join us?" 

Daisuke had to think about the offer. Ordinarily he was crazy about soccer, but all the strange things that had been happening to him over the weekend were beginning to take a toll. But his homework was finished, thanks to Miyako's help yesterday, and it came down to a choice either to play soccer with Taichi, or to stay at home all day playing videogames and listening to Jun natter incessently about Yamato. 

That was enough to convince him to go with Taichi and play soccer. 

He forgot all about the milk. 

----------------------------------------

It was really a nice afternoon: bright sunny skies with a light sea-breeze from the southeast. Perfect for hanging laundry to dry on the balcony. Which was what Daisuke's mother was doing. 

_[At this point it is necessary once again to depart slightly from our main story to make a quick note about Japanese culture. With electricity and gas rates much higher in Japan than in North America, it is common for Japanese housewives to hang laundry on lines run from one end of the apartment balcony to the other, so to save on the cost of running a dryer. In fact, in many places, weather forecasts use icons resembling ladies hanging up their washing, wearing ever bigger grins as the forecasted temperatures increase.]_

She wondered where the narration was coming from, but since it was over so quickly, she assumed she had simply overheard a TV set. 

She had just finished hanging up Daisuke's underwear--carefully hidden behind a pillow-case so it could not be seen from outside the balcony--when the telephone rang. She walked to the other side of the balcony where the wireless handset lay on the table. Deftly she plucked it from the tabletop, expertly pressed TALK, and put it to her ear. 

"Moshi-moshi," came her son's voice. 

Mrs. Motomiya broke into a broad smile. "Moshi-moshi!" she said merrily. "Where are you?" 

"Over at Yagami Taichi's." 

"Where?" 

"You remember Hikari, right?" 

"Of course I do. Such a nice girl." 

"Well, she has an older brother called Taichi, and I'm over at his place now. We were playing soccer in the park, then he asked me if I wanted to come along with him to see a movie. Problem is, the next showing isn't until 7:30." 

"No problem! If the Yagamis are willing to feed you, you can stay with them, then go to the movie. I won't be home for dinner, anyway ... I'll be off to painting class, so your Dad and sister will have to make do with something out of the microwave. What time do you think you'll be home?" 

"About 10:00." 

"Well, have fun then, and enjoy the movie! Bye!" 

"Thanks, mom! Bye!" 

Mrs. Motomiya expertly pressed the disconnect button, and with a flourish set the handset back down upon the table. Then she went back to hanging her laundry, singing to the bluebirds in the sky. 

All along she had no idea her son was actually in his bedroom, muddling through his math homework. 

Daisuke was not having an easy time of it. He struggled with the math, fighting off sleep and wishing Takeru was there to help him. He was so tired he did not notice the previous three pages of his notebook already contained all the answers. 

Halfway through he gave up and took a nap. 

An hour later he got up, finished the math, then went to his computer to work on the language arts essay. That occupied an hour. Satisfied he had a decent essay together, he clicked the SAVE icon and typed in a file name when it asked him for one. 

The computer responded with: **File already exists. Replace? [Yes] [No]**. 

Daisuke clicked on **[Yes]**, and wrote over the much better version his other half and Miyako had put together the day before. 

Just then his father knocked on the door and looked into his room. 

"Your mom's off to an art class," he said. "Do you want to join me and Jun for sushi at a restaurant somewhere?" 

"Sure," said Daisuke. 

----------------------------------------

_Oh, no, not AGAIN!_ thought Daisuke. 

He just asked Taichi's sister Hikari if she wanted to go to _Daughters of the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles_ with him and Taichi and Sora, and she had looked at him funny and said he had been to see it yesterday with her and TK and all the others and didn't he remember doing that and besides he had spent the whole movie talking to Takeru and didn't he think now that he had been pretty stupid saying the things he had to Cyan? 

This time Daisuke didn't bother even trying to tell her he had spent yesterday with Miyako, and he had not yet seen the movie. He was disappointed, too, that Hikari had not decided to go with him to see the movie a second time. And she sounded so cross, too. Perhaps she was more interested in Takeru after all. No matter. It was only a matter of time before he won her over. They were all still young: it would be a few years yet before they could even consider getting married. 

On the way to the theatre, Daisuke asked Taichi, "So, if you're taking Sora out on a date to see this movie, why'd you ask me along?" 

"This isn't really a date," said Taichi. "If it was, I'd've left before now to take her somewhere to eat before the movie, and we'd be catching the 10:00 PM showing and not the 7:30. Oh--Yamato's going to be there, too. He wants to see the movie as much as I do, and since Sora was also interested, we just decided to team up and see it together." 

"Oh. So Yamato doesn't have a date?" 

Taichi laughed. "Like I said, this isn't a date. Last I heard Yamato was coming alone." 

But when they arrived at the theatre, Yamato was with a girl none of them recognised. She was tall and lanky, light-skinned, with long brown wavy hair--quite a contrast to the shorter, black haired Japanese girls. Yamato had an uneasy grin on his face. 

"Hey, Yama, looks like you got a date!" said Taichi. 

Yamato's grin went a little shaggier. "Meh! Sort of! This is Marie, an exchange student at school, and a major Turtles fan." 

"Marie?" asked Sora. "You're French?" 

"Actually, I'm American." Her Japanese was a bit broken, and she elongated the vowels strangely, but her speech was easy enough to follow. "My full name's Mary Sue Allibeth, but whenever I say it, I get strange looks and a lot of giggles. So I just changed it to Marie. Makes life a bit simpler." 

They made introductions all around. When Daisuke's name was mentioned, Marie reached over and rubbed his hair. 

"Aww, such a nice name for a sweet little boy!" she said. 

Daisuke went red. What had he done to deserve this? 

After getting tickets and refresments, they entered the theatre itself and found seats. The movie was as entertaining as ever, and nothing bad happened, despite the enormous amount of _yin_ energy in the building. 

It was a happy group that left the theatre some two hours later. To get to the nearest subway stop, they crossed the street and started walking down the long road that ran up to the front of the theatre. 

"Wow! What a cool movie!" said Daisuke. 

"Yeah!" said Sora. "I liked the part where they saved their boyfriends from the street gang." 

Taichi laughed. "The part I really liked was where Maria was being controlled by the bad guy and she actually turned around and started wailing on Briti and Isabella!" 

Daisuke reacted strangely to Taichi's comment. Instead of laughing, he stopped in his tracks and looked around, as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder. 

"Hey, Daisuke," said Taichi, "is everything all right?" 

"I don't know," Daisuke replied. "Just for a second there it felt like ... like I was watching a program for the second time." 

"The whole movie should have felt like that. After all, you saw it yesterday." 

"**No I didn't!**" Daisuke yelled. Everybody stopped in their tracks. 

"Whoa! Settle down, man!" said Yamato. "What's bugging you all of a sudden?" 

Mary Sue Allibeth put a hand on Daisuke's shoulder to reassure him, but he jumped away at the touch. He looked from one friend to another, a strange, helpless expression on his face. 

"What is it with you guys? You keep telling me I saw the movie yesterday, when I didn't, that I went to a soccer game yesterday, when I was getting help with my homework from Miyako ... even that I slept over at TT's last night!" 

"But that's what Takeru told me," said Yamato. 

"And Hikari told me the same thing," Taichi added. 

"Is that why Hikari didn't want to come with me to the movie tonight?" Daisuke asked. 

"Partly," said Taichi. "It's more what you did to Cyan that got her upset." 

Daisuke groaned. "Oh, no ... _Ken_ said that too. Are still telling me I got into a fight with Cyan last night? 

"Are you denying you did?" asked Taichi. 

"Of course! I spent last night working on my homework with Miyako!" 

"That's not what Hikari says." 

Marie stepped into the conversation. "Guys, stop picking on Daisuke!" 

If Daiskue heard her at all, he gave no indication of it. "What did she say about last night?" he asked. 

"Basically that you and Cyan had an argument about something outside the theatre, and he got so mad he nearly decked you." 

Yamato finished the story. "Takeru says he ran off, shouting that you could sleep in his bedroom. Which you did, apparently." 

"No I didn't!" said Daisuke defensively. "When were you talking to TC?" 

"I called him this afternoon to ask him if he wanted to come to the movie," Yamato said. "He told me about last night." He paused. "And about this morning." 

Marie tried to intervene again. "Will you two lay off on my friend already? It's not nice confusing a little kid like that!" 

But her comment got lost amid Daisuke's growing agitation. He seemed on the verge of tears. "What did he say I did this morning?" 

Yamato looked around, apparently uncomfortable about what he had heard from his younger brother. He bent down to try to deliver the message to Daisuke as privately as he could. 

"He said you told him you liked _him_ better than you like Hikari." 

Daisuke practically exploded. "Gahh! No way would I ever say that! What's your brother trying to do? Make me look like ... like ... Augh!" 

It was too much. He burst into tears and ran off down the long street, sobbing. 

"Hey, Daisuke! come back!" called Taichi. He shot a scorching glare at Yamato. "Just what the hell did you say to him, anyway?" Then he took off down the street after Daisuke. 

Sora ran off after Taichi. 

"It wasn't all that bad!" shouted Yamato after them, and he, too ran off down the street. 

Mary Sue Allibeth was left standing there all alone, her head spinning, and wondering why everyone had gone running off like that. 

_**Narrator:** Will Daisuke have another run-in with a tin of pineapple? Will the Gojira monster in Tokyo Bay wake up? Will Alli-Beth review this chapter? Find out in the next chapter of **Dual Daisuke!**_

_**Cyan:** I am really starting to get tired of you ... _

_**Hikari:** Look, both Miyako and Iori have said it already: even reading the next chapter won't give you the answers! _

----------------------------------------

**Author's notes.** Well, this chapter was a little easier to write, partly because I had the two Daisukes cross each other's paths only once. 

The quote at the start of this chapter started out in The Lord of the Rings: 

_Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger._

Later it appeared in the usenet group alt.music.filk as: 

_Do not meddle in the affairs of filkers, for they are not at all subtle and people do not forget funny songs._

("Filking" refers to songs based on fantasy and science fiction. For more information on filk singing, visit www.filk.com -- link will open in a new browser window.) 

**Ishida316,** keeping the two Daisukes separate required at lot of planning: I spent nearly as much time just thinking about the chapter and planning out the major events as I did writing it, and had to plan out the whole chapter before I wrote anything. 

And yes, the real Cyan does have a major thing for Ruki. But I'm not going to try writing in a paradox here: this story's complicated enough as it is! 

**Alli-beth,** consider yourself lucky. There were a lot of things we considered writing in this chapter, but didn't ... Cyan can get downright nasty sometimes! ^.^ 


	4. Together Again at Last

_Chapter Four_  
**Together Again At Last**

_Don't confuse things that need action with those that take care of themselves._

Daisuke awoke, dazed and confused. He felt worse this morning than he had since things started going nuts back on Saturday. Looking around, he tried to piece together where he was, and how he got there. 

The room was bright. Close by he could hear the sound of a shower running. The fog in his mind lifted just a little, and he finally recognised this place as his living room. He was laying on the couch, fully dressed save for his shoes and goggles. Last night's events started trickling into his consciousness ... 

There was that crazy conversation outside the theatre, where the older digidestined had trid to convince him he had seen the movie the day before. Then Yamato had told him something he had never expected to hear ... what was that again? 

His mind look another loop as he remembered Yamato's words. No wonder he had started crying and running. Taichi had caught up with him after only a couple of blocks, then with Sora's help had spent nearly half an hour calming him down again. Somewhere along the line Yamato had disappeared completely. 

He didn't even remember Mary Sue Allibeth being there. 

Then Taichi and Sora had gone out of their way to accompany him home, making sure he made it up to his apartment before heading home themselves. Daisuke recalled walking toward his bedroom, only to have his mind take another one of those maddening lurches. He had found himself short of breath and felt a little woozy; his legs seemed for a moment to turn to jelly, and his brain felt like it had turned upside-down. He had staggered back to the futon couch in the living room and pretty much collapsed on to it. 

He must have slept there all night. It was morning now, and his family was getting up. 

He heard the shower turn off, then a bedroom door close. He assumed Jun was out of the bathroom. A shower would be nice, and hopefully help clear the lingering whatever it was that was wobbling about his head. 

The bathroom door was closed. Daisuke silently thanked Jun for doing so and keeping all the heat in. He looked in and saw no one else, so he entered and locked the door behind him. He was, of course, at an awkward age, and had no desire to have someone burst in on him and catch him with no clothes on. Quicky he undressed, went to the shower, and pulled the curtain back to enter. 

It was only the sheer shock of seeing someone else there that prevented him from screaming. 

The other person's back was to him, but Daisuke immediately realised it could not be another member of his family: the person was too short. But hearing the shower curtain open, the person jerked his head around in shock. 

Shock turned to horror in three-quarters of a second it took for each Daisuke to realise he was looking at himself. Naked. Then they both leaped from the shower and grabbed at the same towel to cover himself with. 

----------------------------------------

"Keep your voice down already!" said Daisuke urgently to the other boy sitting on his bed. 

_[At this point it really is necessary to deviate slightly from the story line to make a point about names. Normally, with both Daisukes together in the same room, it would be awfully difficult trying to keep the two of them apart: we would be constantly referring to "the Daisuke that got into a fight with Cyan" and "the Daisuke who had Miyako over at his place on Saturday to help him with his homework," and so on and so forth._

_Fortunately for us, the North American dub version of Digimon 02 offers a ready made solution: in that version, Daiskue is referred to as Davis. So from this point on, the one who can never seem to say TK's name properly--the one who had Miyako over at his place on Saturday--will be **Davis**, while the one who got into the fight with Cyan will be referred to as **Daisuke**.]_

"Hey!" said Davis, "I'm _Daisuke!_ I don't want to be called Davis." 

_[Sorry, but I've made up my mind, and that's the way it's going to be.]_

"Oh, all right." Turning to Daisuke, he said, "So I guess we've been split up ever since we failed to make that jump out of the Digital Word on Friday." 

"I made the jump OK," said Daisuke. "You must've been stuck back in the Digital World with Ken." 

"Yeah. It took us an hour to get out. I went back to Ken's place, where we watched a couple of movies, like we had planned to. And I slept over." 

"I didn't. When Ken didn't make it back out, I came home and slept here." 

"So I guess the next night you were over at TM's." 

"TK's," Daisuke corrected. "Yes, I was. So I guess that's how we managed not to meet up on Saturday." 

"Right," said Davis. "What's this about a fight you got into with Cyan?" 

"Oh, that!" Daisuke sweatdropped. "Uh, well, I just said something to him about Perilousmon, and the next thing I know he's getting ready to punch my lights out!" 

"Idiot!" said Davis. "Such a hot-head." 

Daisuke agreed. "He sure doesn't know how to take a joke. Me ... on Saturday I had Miyako over to help me with my homework, and--" 

"Homework? Saturday?" asked Davis. "Please don't tell me you worked on math and language arts!" 

"Yeah: what else would we work on? Are you telling me you did the homeork too?" 

"Of course! I was too busy Saturday going to Ken's soccer game and the Cone Factory and the movie to do my homework. Yesterday was the first chance I got. And now you're telling me I could have saved myself all that work?" 

"Probably," said Daisuke. He had a sudden burst of inspiration. "Let's check the math notebook." 

Davis pulled the notebook from his school pack and they quickly went through it. Sure enough, the work was there twice, but a lot of the answers in the second set did not agree with the first. 

"Trust you to screw it up," said Davis. "You couldn't do math if your life depended on it." 

"Hey!" Daisuke rejoined. "I'll bet you're no better at math than me. You just had some help with the homework. And Miyako probably helped you with the language arts essay, too." 

"Yep," said Davis. He was struck with a sudden thought. "Augh! I knew I forgot something! We need to make a printout of it!" 

"Don't worry, I did that yesterday." 

"Yesterday?" Davis sat and thought. He knew something in Dasuke's statement was not adding up quite right, but he had a hard time putting a finger on it. It took him a full thirty seconds to figure it out. 

"No," he said at last, "you printed _yours_ yesterday. If Miyako didn't help you with it, it'll stink! We need to print mine!" 

He jumped over to the computer and called up the essay he and Miyako had put so much effort into. Then he groaned. Turning to Daisuke, he said, "Idiot! You saved your bad essay over my good one!" 

"Well, excuse _me_ for breathing!" said Daisuke. "I didn't know **I** had worked on it the day before." He heavily emphasized the second "I". 

Then they heard their mother calling. "Daisuke? Hurry up, dear, or you'll be late for school." 

Daisuke went white. "Oh no. Oh no! We can't! We can't both go to school! How in the hell will we explain this to anyone else other than our Digidestined friends?" 

"Maybe we should just go and see what happens. It could be fun." 

"Yeah, just like this whole weekend--one great big barrel of monkeys!" said Daisuke. He did not sound amused. "You don't know how confusing it's been for me. Saturday at the soccer game TK said he had talked to me on the phone, when all along I had actually been at Ken's to get Chibimon. I thought it was a joke TK and Cyan had cooked up." 

"Meh!" Davis exclaimed. "That's why Ken sounded so confused yesterday when I called him to ask if I could come over and pick up Chibimon! I guess you had already done it." 

"Yeah ... Saturday morning." Daisuke was rapidly piecing things together. "We must have crossed paths ... you were probably coming back home from Ken's at the same time I was heading over there to get Chibimon. When I got there, Ken started talking to me about having slept over at his place. Of course, I hadn't. I was wondering why Ken would make a joke like that. It's just not his style. Of course, now I know it was you over at Ken's." 

Davis pointed an accusing finger at Daisuke. "So you thought everyone was just playing jokes on you? What about me? Do you have any idea how much trouble you've gotten me into? Everybody was saying I got into a fight with Cyan!" His eyes narrowed. "And what's this I hear about you making a pass at TX yesterday morning?" he hissed. 

Daisuke raised his eyebrows. "Huh? I just told TK I saw him as a good friend." 

"Yeah, right!" said Davis. "You scared the jeezlies out of him! He even called up his brother Yamato to talk about it. Just for the record, we much prefer Hikari to TF!" 

"It's TK," said Daisuke. "Can't you ever get it right?" 

"Not as far as this fic is concerned," shot back Davis. "Besides, it's one of the few cues the readers have to know which one of us they're dealing with." 

"I think that should have been my line," said Daisuke. "I'm the one figuring all this out. Now, as far as school goes, one of us is going to have to stay here while the other goes to school. So which one of us is going to go, and which one of us is going stay in my--our--bedroom and be really really quiet until he can sneak out and meet the other one at school with our friends and get this whole mess sorted out?" 

Davis was quiet for a few seconds, then he asked, "What was that again?" 

"That settles it," said Daisuke. "You stay here. And be quiet, otherwise mom's gonna look into the bedroom and freak out. At some point you have to sneak out of the apartment and come to school. We'll meet in the computer lab with the others after classes." 

He paused, then grinned for the first time in quite a while. 

"They are going to get one _big_ surpise!" 

----------------------------------------

And a big surprise it was. It was Taichi's idea, really, once he gleaned the truth from Hikari (who had heard it from Daisuke himself) to put Daisuke and Davis sitting side by side together in the computer lab. There they could all watch the expressions on the faces of everyone who came into the room in response to Koushiro's urgent email saying they absolutely had to meet today to discuss an issue that simply could not wait. 

In the end, every Digidestined except Jyou and Mimi made it, and every one of them had reason to doubt their eyes when they came into the room. For there were two Daisukes there, dressed identically, but only one Chibimon. 

It also required a lot of explanation on both their parts. They got frustrated having to go over it again and again for everyone who came into the room, until finally Miyako started telling the newcomers to wait until everyone had arrived, and that way they could all go over the whole story. 

So when everyone (except Jyou, who was at another school, and Mimi, who was not in Japan) had gathered together, they spent nearly an hour going over the entire weekend from everyone's point of view. Koushiro pulled out his laptop and fired up a flowcharting program, and as the others talked he put together a work of flowcharting art that showed the two separate but distinct streams of Daisuke's life from the unceremonious exit from the Digital World on Friday evening to the shower stall incident on Monday morning. The flowchart was so impressive that it went on to become the stuff of legend among the flowcharting community on the internet--all 42 of them. 

Indeed it was quite the tale. There was the Daisukes crossing paths in separate elevators on Saturday morning: one headed over to Ken's to get Chibimon just as the other was coming back from there. There was the second cross-over that day on the bus, when one was heading to the Mount Fuji Cone Factory with Miyako while the other one was on his way to the movie theatre with the gang, having just finished his bannana split with extra chocolate instead of pineapple. The fight with Cyan after the movie that Daisuke knew nothing about; and the conversation with TK Sunday morning that Davis knew nothing about. The near miss the two had had on Sunday about noon when the one coming home from Takeru's, a carton of milk in his hand, had walked within ten feet of the other going into Inoue's store to buy some. 

Yamato saw an opportunity to get something cleared up. "Just what were you thinking when you were talking to my brother yesterday morning?" he asked the two Daisukes, referring to the conversation Takeru had related to him the day before. 

Davis jumped in ahead of Daisuke to answer. "From the sounds of it, _he_"--here he pointed to Daisuke sitting beside him--"was trying to tell TV he saw him as a b-b-boyfriend!" 

Daisuke punched Davis on the shoulder. "Not quite like that!" he retorted. 

"But you apparently you told him you preferred him to Hikari!" Davis snapped. "I sure hope when we get put back together that part of you isn't still around!" 

Daisuke grinned. "Maybe after I'm back together I can take both Hikari _and_ TK out on a date!" 

Now Davis punched Daisuke on the shoulder, hard. Daisuke held his other hand to his hurting shoulder for a minute until the pain subsided. 

"This entire situation is most interesting," said Koushiro. "I've never heard of someone getting split up while leaving the Digital World before." 

"In a world where there are six billion people doing things every day," Ken replied, "it's little wonder strange things happen every once in a while. But we're only fourteen Digidestined, and we don't make the jump back and forth from our world to the Digital every day. The fact it happened at all is a cause for wonder." 

"Uh, yeah," said Davis. He was having trouble following Koushiro's and Ken's conversation, still feeling as he was woozy from the weekend. Knowing he was split into two was little comfort. "So, how are we going to get me back together?" 

"I don't even know if we should try," said Koushiro. "After all, you two are separate individuals now." 

"Oh," said Ken, "are you going to start talking about cloning now?" 

"Yes," Koushiro replied. Of late the ethical issues surrounding human cloning had become his favourite topic of discussion. Even if no one else but Ken had any sort of grasp on the topic. 

"It's exactly that. Just because we have what amounts to a clone of Daisuke running around, doesn't mean that either the original or his clone have lost any rights to existance." 

"Uh, Koushiro ..." said Daisuke. He believed the redhead's perception of the situation was wrong, and wanted to correct him. 

But now Ken chimed in, eager to continue a discussion that to now he had carried on with Koushiro only in an internet chat room. "The issue of cloning today is usually over its usefulness in medical research. It doesn't really cover the situation we have here." 

"Maybe, maybe not," Koushiro said. "We can't exactly argue that what we have here is one Daisuke and a walking, talking set of spare parts for him." 

"Except for the brain," said Cyan dryly. Sora glared at him. 

"Well," Ken responded, "if our Daisuke loses an arm, we can't go cutting off the other one's arm to give it back to him." 

Now Davis tried to get their attention. "Hey you two, if I could ..." But by now both Koushiro and Ken were thoroughly sidetacked in their little discussion, and talked all over Davis's attempts to steer the conversation. 

"The cloning debate," said Koushiro, "is also about designer babies and whether or not we wanted to genetically manipulate our offspring to get the one perfect kid." 

"Iori's parents seemed to have done all right on their own," said Miyako. "He's about as perfect a little boy as I've ever met." 

Iori blushed. 

Trying to score a debating point, Koushiro forged bravely ahead, completely ignoring the two Daisukes' entreaties to become part of the discussion. "But genetic manipulation or not, my point is that once the child is conceived and born, he or she is a _human being_, and entitled to all the rights and responsibilities our society has to offer." 

_[At this point Jyou would have made a trenchent point, but since he was attending another high school, he could not make the meeting.]_

Daisuke gritted his teeth and grumbled. He was still trying to get the debaters' attention so he could make _his_ point, and the interruption from the narrator had not helped matters. 

"All right," said Ken, "I'll grant that clones have rights. I think that much is a given. But we are dealing with Daisuke here. He's our friend, and the fact there's two of him seems to have messed him up a bit." 

"You can tell?" asked Cyan. 

"Cyan!" said Taichi sharply. "If you can't be part of the solution, at least don't be part of the problem." 

"The problem here," said Koushiro, "is that I don't know if it's ethically or morally right to deny existence to the other Daisuke, even if it is causing distress and, up to now, no small amount of confusion." 

"Well," Ken added, "we can't deny they both exist. What you're saying is that they both have a right to continue to exist, now that they do." 

"Exactly!" said Koushiro. "_Cognito, erg sum._ `I think, therefore I am.' --" 

"And no comments from the peanut gallery," said Taichi, looking directly at Cyan. 

Cyan put on an innocent face. "What made you think I was going to say anything?" 

Koushiro was really on a roll now. He seemed to have lost track of the fact he wasn't debating an abstract point: what he was talking about was very real, and sitting in two chairs in the same room. "Anyway, what we have here are two Daisukes, each corpeal, respirating, and cognizant, and as such I don't know if we as a group have the right to even debate the issue of whether or not it is correct to deny either one of them --" 

"_Shut up already!_" yelled both Daisuke and Davis in unison. 

That stopped Koushiro right there. 

"Now, if you fancy-pants high school debaters will listen to us for a moment," said Daisuke, talking for them both, "neither of us really feels like a whole kid. It's as if we've been split into two like an apple. Half my personality is in me. The other half's in him. We want to be put back together!" 

"That presents a bit of a problem," said Ken. "We pretty much know how you got split up. But it may take a similar sort of freak accident to get you back together again." 

"We could try something with the computers," said Koushiro. "I could work with Ken on a program that would re-integrate you. Of course, it would be difficult to test, and take a while to write." 

"How long?" asked Daisuke. 

"Probably a month." 

"A month?" groaned Davis. "Three days have been bad enough!" 

Iori made a suggestion. "How about we put one Daisuke in front of a computer, the other one in front of another computer, and send them both through at the same time?" 

But Koushiro saw a fatal flaw in the idea. "That wouldn't work. If we got the timing wrong, all we'd end up doing is sending both Daisukes into the Digital World. If we got it exactly right, they might end up colliding during the transfer and annihilating each other. And just how would you explain _that_ to their parents?" 

"So, how about we just send both of you back to the Digital World through the same computer terminal?" asked Hikari. 

Everyone in the room turned to look at her. Her simple suggestion sounded common-sense enough to work. 

"Wouldn't that have the same effect as if we sent them both back to the Digital World through different terminals?" Miyako asked. 

"Maybe not," said Koushiro. "I get the impression the Digiport, getting information from both the Daisukes simultaneously, would as a matter of course reintegrate the pair into a single entity at the other end." 

"Put me back together, you mean?" asked Davis. 

"I believe that's what I said," Koushiro responded. 

In the end, putting Daisuke back together was as simple as that. Miyako started the Digiport program, and as a group they all stood before the computer, the two Daisukes side by side in front. As one they pulled out their D-3s and aimed them at the screen. There came the familiar flash of light. Daisuke and Davis were pulled through, and the others followed. 

Once in the Digital World, the kids quickly looked around to count noses. Everyone was there, child and Digimon, and much to everybody's relief, only one Daisuke. Takeru immediately went up to him. 

"So, are you going to ask Hikari out for ice cream some time this week?" he asked. 

"You bet I will," Daisuke replied. "And you're not invited!" 

For the only time in his life, Takeru was happy to hear that answer. 

"We'd better be getting back," said Iori. "Look at those clouds." 

They all looked up to see great, dark, and ominous clouds rushing in from all directions to a point closely overhead. 

"Not again!" said Daisuke. "Let's go!" 

So once more they aimed their D-3s and digivices at the TV set, and made the trip back to the real world. The older digidestined arrived all standing in a semicircle around the the younger ones entangled in a heap on the floor. It took a minute for them to untangle. 

"Still only one Daisuke," said Koushiro. 

"Enough for me," said Cyan. 

"Cool it with quips, already," Takeru admonished. "He's all right in my books." 

"Yeah!" said Chibimon. "Daisuke, you're the greatest!" 

"Sure is!" said the second Chibimon, the one that to now no one had noticed. 

_**Narrator:** Will the second Chibimon be as annoying as the first? Will -- **GAHHH!** _

_**Cyan** (extracting sword from narrator's chest): The story's over, so we don't need you any more!_

_**Daisuke:** Thanks, Cyan._

----------------------------------------

**Author's notes.** Finished at last! This chapter was probably the easiest of the lot to write, because I had a good idea of what to include for most of it. And the story ended up being longer than **Rift!**

**Miyako-Miyako-Izumi:** Sorry about making your little Dai-ai cry, but he is only eleven years old, and boys at that age still cry if something upsets them enough. 

**Amayako:** Sorry, Mimi's not in Japan, and Daikens were not really part of the plot. It was hard enough keeping the friendships straight between the two Daisukes without the added burden of having one of them going after Ken (or the other way round). Not to mention that would have extended the word count beyond what it already was... 

**Skywolf:** Thanks for your kind words, especially about the educated use of language. I take my English quite seriously, even if I am writing humour. (In fact, writing clearly may be more important in humour than any other genre: if the audience does not get the jokes, the writer has failed completely.) 

**Cherry:** Thank you for your kind words, too. I'm a pretty poor replacement for Adams, though: that man had such a talent for perposterousity (I think I just invented a new word there) that I could only hope to hold a candle to it. Foty-two, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the Total Perspective Vortex, Eddie the Computer, Slartibardfast's award for his coastine of Scandinavia, the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, the Babel Fish, and of course the Guide itself ... what a breadth of imagination! Aside from this work, I've come up with only one other idea that I thought was up to the Douglas Adams level of strangeness (something along the lines of requiring self-destruct devices in photocopiers.) 


	5. Appendix: Some Notes on the Creative Pro...

_Chapter Five_  
**Appendix: Some notes on the creative process**

_**Author's note:** The following three paragraphs were part of the original story, but I had to take them out when Cyan pointed out to me there was no way Jyou could be in university. Instead of deleting them from the story completely, however, I surrounded them with HTML comment tags; that is, I started the section with **!--** and ended it with **--**. Normally, this causes the web browser to not display any text between those two marks. However, when I uploaded the story to fanfction.net, the HTML stripper removed the opening comment tags, so the paragraphs ended up getting displayed anyway! _

_Once I discovered the error, I quickly created a temporary copy of the chapter with the lines removed entirely and uploaded it. But not before **Ishida316** read it, then left a review asking what it was all about. After that time, of course, any reader seeing that review would be wondering, "What part is he referiing to?" So, to save both my face and a fan's, here is the "lost" section._

_(The following three paragraphs were originally immediately after the lines that read, "At this point Jyou would have made a trenchent point, but since he was attending another high school, he could not make the meeting.")_

In fact, he never got Koushiro's message, because the university had, in a fit of insanity, switched the campus mail server from a Unix based machine to a high end server running Microsoft Exchange, and the new far less stable server had been happily eating about half the mail coming into it (on the rare occasions between crashes when it was actually running). The message from Koushiro was one of the ones that ended up in electronic heaven instead of Jyou's in-box. 

This sad state of affairs continued for many months until a group of geeks hacked into the Unversity's network and redirected the student e-mail feeds to a small computer strategically hidden somewhere in a dorm room. This computer ran Linux, and it did so continuously for the next three years without a single hiccup. 

Meanwhile, the faculty and admin staff, still using the fancy new Exchange server, continued losing half their email, while their systems were periodically wiped out from the latest email viruses.] 

_**Narrator:** (Sorry the narrator is no longer with us)._

**Impmon:** No, the two Daisukes wouldn't get into a fight over Kari: one of them liked Kari and saw her as his girlfriend, while the other one hadn't really discovered girls yet ... had they stayed split up, he would have in a couple of years. 

**Skywolf:** Thanks for saying the story was great. It was both a lot of fun and a lot of work to put together. 

**Ishida316:** I decided to add a reference to "42" at the last minute, and wondered where I could put it in. While reading through the chapter, I saw I had written the line, "among the flowcharting community on the Internet - all two dozen of them" and put it there. Also, you saw the part about the University within half an hour of me finding the problem and fixing it. So now I had a story that did not mention the University, and a review that did! I decided to fix the problem by writing this appendix. Of course, a new chapter has the side effect of putting the story higher in the fanfiction.net listings, thus giving more people an opportunity to see and review it (I live and die by the review count grin). 


End file.
